Heartbeat
by Soleil1
Summary: My first fanfic ever. Farfarello-centered - walk with caution.


DISCLAIMER: I don't own Weiss Kreuz or any of the characters. See, I don't even know how to do that nifty little German B-like thingy that's supposed to be on the end of "Wei-." I just kinda suck like that. Oh well, on with the show. It's Farfie, so if he skeeves you, don't read.  
  
   
  
FEEDBACK: Like all writers, sane or otherwise, it is what I live for.  
  
   
  
ARCHIVE: Um. Should the unlikely event arise, sure, just kindly ask before you smack it up there with the proper credits, and let me know where it's off to.  
  
  
  
heartbeat  
  
The world was dark, and full of lies. He could see them. Hear them. Reach out into the darkness and touch them, feel the fluttering hearts of each of the liars, beating until they burst. Little birds, pounding against cages of bone and shrouds of muscle. Weak little wings beating ineffectually as the steel parted the skin and flesh, delving down until it reached each pitiful little creature of muscle and humanity, heart's blood pouring out, jetting out in thick spurts and gushes, trickling out over his hands.  
  
Right before you reached that point, after the questioning and the cursing and the begging, right before you reached that part, they would tell you anything. Anything you wanted to hear. Lies and false promises, clawing their way up the throat and spilling past bloody lips to assault his ears. They would tell you anything. Anything to save themselves. Anything you wanted to hear. Anything at all.  
  
It was disgusting.  
  
As long as they still possessed any life within them, they would cling to their lies, digging deeper into their delusions, laying hope against hope, believing that their false God, false world, would save them. Like blind children born into an existence of falsehood and fairytales, never destined to even glimpse a truth that was not distorted and disfigured by deceit.  
  
But when they finally died, they were beautiful.  
  
Became beautiful. As the body strained to keep itself in this world of precious lies, heart beating so frantically, muscles spasming, eyes widening to their fullest extent with the fearful pupils swallowed by the colored iris, lying mouth falling silent and open, the tiniest, delicate thread of scarlet trickling down the lips. In that final moment, when they were like this, when they looked out someplace where even he could not see, that was when they were at their most beautiful. He would watch them as this process occurred; sometimes he would touch them, running a surprisingly gentle hand through their hair, or brushing his fingertips across quivering, bloody lips. Once, he had even held a man's hand. A traveling priest, intent on spreading the word of his God. Upon seeing his scars and his bandages, the man had approached him, mistaking him for one of the lost lambs of God that sold themselves for the cash that would buy them their next high. The man had been, as he remembered, a strange man. Even as he died, choking on his own blood to force the words out, he had pleaded with him to tell God, only tell God and all, even this, would be forgiven and he would no longer have to feel the pain and sickness that drove him to commit such atrocious acts. Only ask for forgiveness of God. He'd said it over and over, speaking out into the darkness, into the dispassionate ears of his tormentor, his liberator.  
  
He spoke like her.  
  
He adhered, even at the door of death, in the face of truth, to his God, his perfect, omnipotent lie. The greatest delusion of all. Even the thought of such a thing, an all-loving being that would care for everyone, love everyone, keep everyone safe. It was ludicrous. Laughable. And infuriating. Normally, the abrasive sound of such gratingly iron faith would have caused him to lose himself and his self-control in the desire to silence the offensive falsity. He still wasn't certain why that time had been any different. Instead, he had knelt beside the priest on the cold concrete floor of the warehouse that he had brought him to, and gripped the slowly numbing hand in his own. Still holding on tightly, he had leaned until his own face was mere inches away from that of the dying man's. He had watched with a gaze that was even more transfixed, more rapt than usual. He stared, studying the cooling, paper-white skin, drained of blood; he'd listened to the ragged, struggling breaths, irregular and forced. He knew that only a few moments after death, the pale globes of the eyes would begin to soften in their sockets and lose shape, and after a few hours rigor mortis would set in. What little blood left in the silent veins would settle without the propulsion of the beating heart to the lowest points in the body, making dark, bruise-like markings on the back. These things all took place after death, and were, therefore, unimportant to him. But that time had been different. That time, he had wanted to see everything. His hungry, searching eyes had taken in everything, absorbed every detail. He wasn't exactly sure how or why, but somehow, that man had been, in some way, special. Even more beautiful than the rest, as he lay dying. "God loves you," he'd said, right before he died. Wasting his last breath to speak those false, meaningless words. "I, and all God's creatures love you. Remember that." he'd said.  
  
He had been a strange man.  
  
  
  
It was raining again. Lightly stinging needles of water, falling from the clouds, cleansing and concealing. Farfarello didn't mind the rain. As it struck the pavement beneath and around the body of the target, it mingled with the blood and turned it into swirling, rippling, red patterns on the concrete and on the grass. A short distance away, he could hear Schurdich and Nagi, cursing half-heartedly at the coming storm. Their voices echoed across the way to where Farfarello stood, one deeper and tinged with a faint German accent, the other young, high and giving off the faint impression that it had not yet grown into itself. Both were cut off rather abruptly by the sharper, brusque intonations that were Crawford, informing the other Schwarz that they could save the complaining for later. The auditory void left behind by this announcement was filled a few moments later by the sounds of three sets of feet, and a few last straggling complaints about "wet, cold," and "that arrogant bastard." Farfarello remained standing over his kill, watching the dancing crimson designs that each, tiny, bullet of rain made, getting increasingly soaked with every minute until Crawford's expensive Italian shoes entered his line of vision. "Farfarello," he said, voice curt and brisk," we're leaving."  
  
Farfarello blinked. Yes. They were leaving. The job was over, everyone that was supposed to be dead, was, and they were leaving now. Farfarello let the knowledge seep slowly into his brain, savoring the last fading hints of euphoria from the kill. He spared one last glance for the body at his feet before turning to follow the others, who had passed him. They left their little playground behind, piling wet and freezing into Crawford's car. They drove quietly away, leaving the rain to play in the beautiful blood. 


End file.
